Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Hello and welcome to ExamPundit. Here are the important Current Affairs of 15th March, 2016.

Current Affairs at a Glance – 15th March, 2016

ICICI Bank, country's largest
private sector lender, has launched a mobile solution that allows customers to
make payments with their linked cards to its 'pockets' offering by just tapping
the mobile phone. NFC employs radio transmission to ascertain contact
when the cards are tapped or waved near a terminal. However, apart from NFC the
bank is also using Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology for this offering.

India Post in the second week of March 2016 selected Deloitte to advise it on setting up a payments bank. An
agreement between the two was signed on 14 March 2016. The Public Investment
Board (PIB) has already approved the 800-crore rupees proposal of India Post.
The proposal will be sent to the Union Cabinet within two weeks for final
approval.

Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) has been chosen to develop,
manufacture and maintain the RussianKAMOVKa-226T helicopters for
the Indian armed forces.

Infosys Foundation has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with NGO Sahakara Mitra Samsthato
enhance livelihood of the farming community in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

The Ministry of Tourism,
Government of India signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the
Ecotourism Society of India (ESOI) to take its commitments to Responsible and
Sustainable tourism to the next level.

Parytak Mitra Programme was in news on 14 March 2016. It came in
news after the information on the same was provided in the Lok Sabha by the
Minister of State for Culture and Tourism (I/C) Dr. Mahesh Sharma.

Pope Francis on 15 March 2016 announced that Mother Teresa will be
made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church at a ceremony on 4 September
2016.

The 59th Session of Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) was
inaugurated on 14 March 2016 in Austria’s capital Vienna.

Myanmar's Parliament on 15 March 2016 elected Htin Kyaw as the first
civilian president to lead the country after 53 years of military rule.
Army took power in a 1962 coup.

The Booker prize-winning British
author and renowned art historian Anita Brookner died on 10 March 2016. She was
87.

Finance/Banking –

ICICI Bank launches contactless mobile payments solution

ICICI Bank, country's largest
private sector lender, has launched a mobile solution that allows customers to
make payments with their linked cards to its 'pockets' offering by just tapping
the mobile phone.

Rajiv Sabharwal, Executive
Director, ICICI Bank said this is one step ahead of the tap-and-pay solution that
the bank has been offering.

"Near Field Communication
enabled cards was introduced earlier but this is a step ahead. With this, you
don't need to have your card with you at the time of making a payment as long
as the card is linked to Pockets," he said.

Pockets, is a digital banking
service offered by ICICI Bank which has had about 3.3 million downloads so far.

NFC employs radio transmission to
ascertain contact when the cards are tapped or waved near a terminal. However,
apart from NFC the bank is also using Host Card Emulation (HCE) technology for
this offering.

The HCE technology creates
'virtual' cards for 'physical' credit or debit cards (Visa/MasterCard) of the
Bank, as selected by the customer.

This virtual card will reside in
the bank's secure cloud server. By using the virtual cards, an ICICI Bank
customer can initiate electronic payments from NFC enabled smartphones by just
waving his/her phone near a contactless merchant terminal.

India Post selected Deloitte as consultant for payments bank

India Post in the second week of
March 2016 selected Deloitte to advise it on setting up a payments bank. An
agreement between the two was signed on 14 March 2016.

The Public Investment Board (PIB)
has already approved the 800-crore rupees proposal of India Post. The proposal
will be sent to the Union Cabinet within two weeks for final approval.

The pilot for the payments bank
is set to start from January 2017 and the full-fledged operations may start by
March 2017.

The Reserve Bank of India had
granted payments bank permit to India Post, which is already into providing
financial services and has 1.55 lakh branches across the country.

India –

HAL to manufacture Russian KAMOV Ka-226T helicopters

Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL)
has been chosen to develop, manufacture and maintain the Russian KAMOV Ka-226T
helicopters for the Indian armed forces.

“HAL has been identified in view
of its capabilities in the field of design, development, manufacture and
maintenance of aircraft,” Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in a written
reply to the Rajya Sabha.

The manufacturing unit will be
coming up at Tumakuru near Bengaluru primarily to take up manufacture and MRO
activities for indigenously designed and developed light utility helicopter and
other helicopters, he said.

“The plan for setting up of the
facility existed even before the finalization of manufacture of Kamov 226T
helicopters,” Parrikar said.

The Defence Acquisition Council
(DAC) had approved the purchase and joint production Ka-226T light multirole
helicopters last year.

However, the deal was officially
announced during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Moscow in last
December.

Infosys Foundation has signed a
memorandum of understanding (MoU) with NGO Sahakara Mitra Samstha to enhance
livelihood of the farming community in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

The philanthropic arm of Infosys
has pledged Rs 5 crore to the NGO, also known as Center for Collective
Development (CCD), to work on increasing revenue and profits of farmers and
create awareness about sustainable agricultural practices by adopting efficient
business models.

CCD will also aim to build
sustainable farmer co-operative societies and facilitate pooling, processing as
well as the sale of produce in two districts of Andhra Pradesh (Anantapur and
Chittoor) and one district in Telangana (Adilabad), a company statement said.

It will also work towards
bringing in new co-operatives from different areas to strengthen the federation
activities of its association, set up new processing units and enable the
creation of a district level forum where farmers can voice their issues, the statement
added.

MoU Signed Between M/O Tourism and Ecotourism Society of India for
Responsible and SustainableTourism

The Ministry of Tourism,
Government of India signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the
Ecotourism Society of India (ESOI) to take its commitments to Responsible and
Sustainable tourism to the next level. In accordance, Shri Suman Billa, Joint
Secretary, M/o Tourism and Mr. Steve Borgia, Honorary President, Ecotourism
Society of India signed the MOU in the presence of Shri Vinod Zutshi, Secretary,
Ministry of Tourism.

The Ministry of Tourism and the
Ecotourism Society of India started the process a couple of years ago when they
formulated & published the STCI (Sustainable Tourism Criteria for India)
and carried it to the grass root level through series of advocacy workshops.
Through this MOU, it is expected that sustainable tourism and Responsible
Tourism will take the forefront and achieve the commitments of the Ministry's
action plan.

The Ecotourism Society of India
(ESOI) was established in 2008 at the behest of the Ministry of Tourism (MOT)
as a non-profit organization to promote environmentally responsible and
sustainable practices in the tourism industry across the country.

Parytak Mitra Programme to enable Students to act as Tourist
Facilitators

Parytak Mitra Programme was in
news on 14 March 2016. It came in news after the information on the same was
provided in the Lok Sabha by the Minister of State for Culture and Tourism (I/C)
Dr. Mahesh Sharma.

The programme was launched by
Union Ministry of Tourism on 12 January 2016 (National Youth Day) to inculcate
appropriate tourism traits and knowledge amongst the trainees to enable them to
act/work as Tourist Facilitators (Prayatak Mitra).

College going student including
those enrolled with the NCC & NSS in the age group of 18 – 28 years. The
age will be reckoned on the last date prescribed for application for admission.

The programme seeks to improve
the sectoral service standards, which is one of the pre-requisites for attracting
tourists in larger numbers.

Objective of the Programme

To inculcate appropriate tourism
traits and knowledge amongst the trainees to enable them to act/work as Tourist
Facilitators (Prayatak Mitra).

To expect the young men and women
so trained to act as catalyst / resource persons in turn for similar effort.

Odisha Cabinet approved constitution of Food Commission as per NFSA

Odisha Cabinet on 14 March 2016
approved a proposal to constitute a State Food Commission (SFC) as per the
National Food Security Act (NFSA) 2013. It will monitor and evaluate the
implementation of the NFSA Act and advice for its effective implementation to
the State government.

The Commission will have five
members and one member secretary including a chairperson. The chairperson will
hold the rank of chief secretary, while members and member secretary will be in
the ranks of principal secretary and joint secretary respectively. The tenure
of the members will be three years.

Awards & Honors –

Pope Francis announced Mother Teresa to be granted Sainthood

Pope Francis on 15 March 2016
announced that Mother Teresa will be made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church
at a ceremony on 4 September 2016.

The pope cleared the way for
sainthood to Mother Teresa, who was famed for her lifetime of service to the
poor, establishing shelters for homeless, orphanages, soup kitchens and clinics
around the world.

The Vatican credited her with the
2008 cure of a Brazilian man who had been suffering from brain tumors.

The first step toward making her
a saint took place in 2002 when Mother Teresa was credited with the healing of
a Bengali woman who suffered from tuberculosis and cancer.

World –

China to set up International Maritime 'Judicial Centre'

Supreme Court of China on 13
March 2016 announced to create its own international maritime judicial centre.
The centre will be established to handle territorial disputes and protect
China’s sovereignty, maritime rights and other core interests at sea.

The announcement of the centre
was made by the Chief Justice Zhou Qiang during the ongoing annual meeting of
China's parliament. This centre would help China to become a maritime power.

Details of the location, kind of
cases it would have jurisdiction over were not provided.

Malawi, UNICEF tested first UAV flights for early diagnosis of HIV in
infants

The Government of Malawi and
UNICEF on 14 March 2016 successfully tested the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
(UAVs or drones) to explore cost effective ways of reducing waiting times for
HIV testing of infants.

As part of the test, simulated
blood samples were transported from a community health centre to the Kamuzu
Central Hospital laboratory that is located at a distance of 10 kilometers.

Though drones were used in the
past for surveillance and assessments of disaster, this is the first known use
of UAVs in Africa for improvement of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
services.

59th Session of Commission on Narcotic Drugs inaugurated in Vienna

The 59th Session of Commission on
Narcotic Drugs (CND) was inaugurated on 14 March 2016 in Austria’s capital
Vienna.

The 9-day long session seeks to
promote a comprehensive understanding of the world drug problem and evolve
appropriate strategies to deal with it.

Around 1500 delegates
representing Member States, inter-governmental organizations, and civil society
will be participating in the session.

During the session, the
Commission will discuss 10 draft resolutions and hold 74 side events and over
25 exhibitions.

Mauritania ratified 2014 Protocol to the Forced Labour Convention

Mauritania on 14 March 2016
became the second African country to ratify the 2014 Protocol to the Forced
Labour Convention 1930.

Prior to Mauritania, Niger
(Africa), Norway (Europe) and the United Kingdom (Europe) ratified the
protocol.

The protocol requires States to
take effective measures for prevention of forced labour, protection of victims
and ensuring their access to justice and compensation.

60th Session of Commission on the Status of Women inaugurated in New
York

The 60th Session of Commission on
the Status of Women was inaugurated on 14 March 2016. The 11-day long session
will take place at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the USA.

During the session, the
Commission will discuss on its priority theme - Women’s empowerment and its link
to sustainable development.

In addition, it will evaluate
progress in the implementation of the agreed conclusions from the fifty-seventh
session (2013) on ‘The elimination and prevention of all forms of violence
against women and girls’.

UK Anti-Doping appointed as Secretariat for International Olympic
Committee Anti-doping Taskforce

United Kingdom Anti-Doping (UKAD)
on 14 March 2016 was granted a role of organising a worldwide fight against
performance-enhancing drugs in the run-up to 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

It was appointed as the
secretariat for an International Olympic Committee anti-doping taskforce which
will seek to standardise testing procedures.

The announcement came with Russia
still banned by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF)
and on course to be excluded from the Olympics following a report into mass
doping violations.

Obituaries –

Booker prize-winner Anita Brookner died

The Booker prize-winning British
author and renowned art historian Anita Brookner died on 10 March 2016. She was
87.

Brookner, who won the Booker in
1984 for her novel Hotel du Lac, was a bestselling author and wrote more than
25 novels.

Brookner, who in 1967 became the
first female to be named a Slade professor of art at Cambridge University, was
known for her style and stories centering on the theme of middle-class
loneliness, often featuring female protagonists.